Tag:travel
I should have been on a flight to the Yukon on Wednesday. I was meant, by now, to be sitting on a river with bears. I was, instead, lying on an operating table getting an emergency appendectomy. Don’t let anyone tell you the life of a photographer isn’t full of adventure. Oh, the romance of it all! Timing couldn’t have been worse. Or better, really. My appendix could have ruptured while I was in Zimbabwe last week, or while sitting […]
I was about to photograph a beautiful family of cheetah in gorgeous morning light when my camera returned an error message and wouldn’t—no matter what I did—focus. It wouldn’t even fire. By the time I got my lens swapped onto another body, the action was all over, and I was down a camera at the beginning of a month-long trip. Or was I? Back at camp, I discovered the problem: the flange on the camera, the one to which my lenses […]
I came home from Zambia with a small handful of images I love. Maybe eight. The jury is still out. But a couple of them I really love. The rest are just meh, a collection of sketch images that don’t make me lean in or quicken my heart. Far from failures, they’re what it takes to get me to the good stuff. Between game drives last week, I found myself telling one of my guests that I was experiencing something […]
The notes below are specific to Kenya but having done safaris in Zimbabwe and South Africa as well, most of these suggestions apply just as well to other places. I’ve been asked over the years, both by my safari clients and others, what and how to pack for a trip like this, so it felt like this might be a good time to explore that for those who are curious. If you and I were sitting down over a glass of wine […]
There’s a curse among photographers, if you believe in such things (curses, that is, not photographers), and it’s this: Sometimes what we do not see can blind us to what is in front of us. Go somewhere with a certain kind of photograph in mind and you might look so hard for that kind of image that you never see what’s actually there. Our expectations can be our biggest blind spots. I went to Zimbabwe and South Africa last month […]
My work in Kenya didn’t go as planned. Story of my life, right? But I’m not referring to the fact that my first two days in Kenya were spent in bed in a tent in the bush, with an IV fluid and antibiotic drip, trying to get a fever down. I’m not referring to the fact that unseasonable rains changed everything, including the presence (scarce!) of animals that we were there to photograph. I don’t even mean the fact that one […]
In two days, I pack the truck and head north up Vancouver Island to meet my wolf guide, Tom, before spending two weeks camped on a remote island, waiting for coastal wolves to wander in front of my cameras. 🤞 Maybe some otters, bears, or eagles, too. I can’t wait. Packing for a trip is always a mix of excitement and indecision. When I go to Kenya, I’m on autopilot; I know the gear and how to pack it. I’ve got packing […]
This one is a longer one, but I think it’s worth it. Put the coffee on, find a place to settle in. And then scroll to the bottom to see some images from my recent wolf expedition A month ago, I found myself in a tuxedo, eating ants and mealworms (but not the scorpions, grubs, or tarantulas also on offer) at the 120th Explorer’s Club Annual Dinner in New York City. It turns out the insects were not the most challenging […]
Ten years ago, I got off a de Havilland Beaver, the quintessential bush plane of the Canadian north, and stepped into the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Sanctuary for the first time—and it was love at first sight. The long inlet not far from the border with Alaska is flanked by mountains and cliffs, all covered in evergreens draped with flowing moss, and ends in an estuary that’s impossibly green and home to grizzly bears safe from the guns of hunters. If you’ve […]
There is a powerful argument to be made for photographing what intrigues you, what you love, or that by which you are obsessed. Making photographs takes time, so that curiosity, love, or obsession serves you well when your best work demands not fractions of a second or even minutes, but hours, days, or—in the case of longer projects—even years. Bears have become a growing obsession for me. I don’t know where it comes from or what part of me these bears touch […]